These Heroes, My Parents
by Lossenrhos
Summary: Charles Harry Weasley reflects on being the son of the couple that saved the world. Warning: Character death.


Disclaimer: Not mine, Rowling's.

A/N: This story was inspired by AgiVega's beautiful picture entitled "Look, we're married". If you're interested it can be found at The Sugar Quill in the Flourish and Blott's Archive. This fic was written for the SQ's FanArt challenge, in the 87 Rolls of Parchment forum.

A big thank you to Midland Star for beta!

I found the photograph in a shoebox, hidden among pictures of us, Molly in her dress robes, me grinning beside a wonky tower of exploding snap cards. It gave me a strange sick feeling to see those faces, so strange and so familiar staring up at me, unlined and full of youthful joy. _They are younger here than I am now,_ I thought feeling dizzy. Ron and Hermione Weasley holding out their hands to exhibit wedding rings, glinting in the sun.

I suppose all children find it hard to think of their parents as having had independent lives before them, but for us it was even stranger. When I talk to anyone else about my mother and father, my uncle and aunt, I get the strange clammy sense of double vision. I see my mother, the woman who taught me to read, and tucked me in to bed at night, my father, the man who played toy soldiers with me for hours at a time and woke me up with a cup of tea in the mornings. And then I see the war heroes, the Elf Rights campaigners, strange mythical beings like characters from the Superwizard magazines I used to buy from the village shop. I remember when I was small going round to a friend's house

"_Let's play Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort! I'll be Harry, Charlie you can be Ron Weasley and Janey can be Hermione. Mary can be Lord Voldypants."_

"_I always have to be Voldemort. Why can't I be Hermione?"_

"_Because I'm the biggest and anyway it's my game!"_

Strangely it wasn't until later that I realised they had been talking about _my _uncle Harry, _my _parents. I remember when I first began to teach History I assigned my class an essay on the historical figure they most admired. I had fifteen Harry Potters, six Hermione Grangers, a Ron Weasley and an Uric the Oddball. I remember telling my mother about it later, and she had laughed, going slightly pink.

"How silly."

"Well, it's nice to know I'm still up there with Uric the Oddball." My father said, coming in from the kitchen wearing an apron. (I wondered if little Alistair Smith realised his hero wore a frilly apron at home, and make gingerbread on his spare afternoons.)

"It's nice to know I'm still beating you into a cocked hat." My mother teased.

"Ah, but you have an unfair advantage being a girl, and all that. Feminists always go for you." Dad shook his head exaggeratedly, than ruffled his wife's hair. "Fancy a game of chess?"

"I'm busy." My mother rustled her piles of paper. "Manny the house elf's tribunal, remember?"

"It's Sunday, love. You know, the day of rest? Do it tomorrow."

"Well…"

"C'mon. You know how important it is to salvage my ego, like this?"

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, only that I always beat you."

"Not _always_ Ron. Well…. Well, I suppose I could…."

"Go on, Mum." I said. "I'll look over these papers for you."

"Well, all right, but only for a minute…"

I blinked coming back to the present. Was I really remembering it, I wondered, or just filling in the gaps from my memory? It was a scene that repeated itself seemingly almost every Sunday I could remember: Mummy busy working, Daddy pulling her away to play chess, or sample his gingerbread. Those Sundays were over now, vanished. I would spend my weekends alone, or with Molly and her kids, and the smell of gingerbread wafting through the house would only be a memory. I looked at those handsome glowing faces looking up at me from that square of cardboard. Did they realise then, what their lives would be like? Forty years of marriage, two children, pretty wild Molly and staid dull Andrew, three grandchildren and then…. death? Just like that? Molly had written in her owl, _they died within an hour of each other. They would've wanted that._ I looked at the photo, wondering. Would they?

The Dragon Pox had spread so fast through the village; it was over before I even knew about it. I had been in France, researching Goblin Allegiances. Molly had been here, nursing them through the worst of it. I remembered with a lurch, how she looked on my return, my pretty sister, grey faced, aged overnight.

"It's all over." she had told me, and collapsed weeping into my arms. Uncle Harry stood behind her, face wooden, fists clenched. His wife came slowly down the stairs, dark eyes wide, and slipped a hand into his. I patted Molly on the back automatically, wondering when the journalists would be here, and what we would say.

"_They died as they lived with courage and with compassion…"_

Suddenly I felt sick. They were going to take it from us, our grief, and splash it across the broadsheets. Everywhere across the Wizarding world people would be weeping for them, and our tears would freeze. It wasn't our grief, it was everybody's. It wasn't fair. They were _my parents._

I pulled away from Molly, running up the stairs, past the room where the bodies were laid out, up to the loft where the photos were kept. I wanted something, evidence, proof, that my parents belonged to me and not to that baying mob out there who thought everything my parents did was their property. Pictures fluttered through my fingers, sharp edges jabbing. Pictures, wizard and muggle. A red headed family; waving in front of the Hogwarts Express; Uncle Harry with Aunt Ginny with Lily and Arthur playing at their feet; my parents by the fire, paying chess; my mother in her Wizengamot robes; my dad in his apron. Molly in her dress robes me with my tower of cards. And this picture. My parents as everyone imagined them, beautiful, glamorous, and young. Two years after the defeat of Voldemort. Exhibiting their wedding rings proudly, glowing with love, with determination to set up a life together.

The hero, the heroine and their happy ever after. My parents, the heroes. And suddenly something clicked in my mind. My parents _were_ heroes. The people who had sat beside me bed all night when I had measles, who sang me songs when I was small, the people who had fought so unbelievably hard, who had had the courage to save the world from itself. You could be both. Both ordinary and extraordinary. The courage to be normal, and the courage to be more than normal… it was the same.

There was a noise behind me. Molly. She came over to me, doubled over under the low ceiling, and rested her chin on my shoulder. My cheeks were wet but she didn't comment. She was looking at the picture in my hand.

"They were gorgeous, weren't they?" she said softly.

"Yes." I replied, running my thumb over the smooth edge of the photo. "Yes, they were."


End file.
